I was just browsing the boards & looking at the latest debates as to which system is/will be better, which one will have widescreen and better sound, my opinions are right and yours aren't... yadda,yadda,yadda.
So,instead of being depressed,and getting ready to go sell Pikachu N64's...well I have come to a new conclusion. Someone should make this system have 5.1 sound and widescreen games...progressive scan wouldn't hurt either...
Now if one of you can help me out here, THAT would be most impressive -
Calvin
PS: All the next-gen consoles have something good to offer..we should all be happy about the future of gaming...because it has arrived
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"Never give up!!! .......... Never surrender!!!!!!!!!."

Atari 2600 ruled the world back in the day... I still play it every once in a while and managed to hold on to all my games over the years...
Pacman
Pitfall 1 & 2
Space Invaders
Pole Position
Donkey Kong
Missile Command
and a couple more...
...jez...what these systems need nowadays is a B&W/COLOR switch... hehehe
don't get me started on PONG.
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Robert Lutter

Great thread!
I just re-invigorated my game playing by connecting my Atari 2600. Playing it on my 60" screen with my DSP-A1 cranking is a blast! i finally found a use for all those Yamaha soundfields!
As I put in a cartridge and flipped the (analog!) power switch, I was amazed by two things:
1. The thing still works perfectly, just like the day I got it in 1978, despite some rather harsh storage conditions in the last 23 years.
2. The games are still compelling. I just can't believe how engrossed I was with River Raid, Pitfall, Ms. Pacman, Asteroids, even Combat and Dodge'Em! And we're talking about 16 colors, a 64x64 (?)pixel grid, and sine/square wave tone generators for audio.
In the context of all this talk about processor power, frames per second, PLII vs DD, and so forth, it makes me think we've all fallen prey to the "red herring" marketing ploy in a huge way. It's a lot easier for a company to put a faster processor in a machine/make it smaller/whatever and then brag about it than it is to create compelling game design.
I know it's been said before, but it really is all about the games. All the rest of this baloney is meaningless if the games aren't compelling.
I think I'm going to become the Official HTF Atari 2600 Fanboy. Back to Pole Position now...
------------------www.kilroyinteractive.com[Edited last by John Kilroy on September 30, 2001 at 11:13 PM]

I'm a 30 year-old guy who has very fond memories of the 2600. I loved that console and those games.
That said, I have no desire to play any of those godawful games ever again. Don't get me wrong, they were fantastic for their time but they cannot compare to today's games. I hold that nostalgia impares our judgement and makes us find any simblance of "fun" in these old games. We want to love them as much as we once did.
I don't want to crap all over the importance many 2600 games have had on the industry but let's face it: they get dull pretty quick in comparison to today's stuff.

Hey, I'm the official HTF Atari Fanboy...
Camp,
It depends what you're looking for in a game. Asteroids, Ms. Pac-Man, Robotron and Joust still spend a lot of time in my 7800 NOW because they're great fun and completely replayable, even after you've gotten good at them, whereas a lot of modern games are designed to be disposable - play them through once, and there's not much more you can do with them; you're finished. The newer stuff is also not exactly great for when you've just got twenty minutes or a half-hour to kill; you have to make a commitment.
The graphics and sound are primitive, sure, but the games are so abstract as to make it a non-issue, and the gameplay is addictive enough that the twenty minutes you've got to kill becomes a couple hours awful quickly.

Jay's Movie Blog - A movie-viewing diary.Transplanted Life: Sci-fi soap opera about a man placed in a new body, updated two or three times a week.Trading Post Inn - Another gender-bending soap, with different collaborators writing different points of view.

I would agree that today's games (in general) have a hard time competing with classic games in terms of "pick-up and play". There is certainly something to be said for the instant fix a game like Asteroids or Robotron give you.
Beyond that, however, there's not much there. And there's not supposed to be anything beyond that. That's what those games were designed to do and that's one of the ways they totally succeeded.

I would agree that today's games (in general) have a hard time competing with classic games in terms of "pick-up and play". There is certainly something to be said for the instant fix a game like Asteroids or Robotron give you.

Why aren't there more games like that being made, I wonder? I don't really believe that all of the simple gaming scenarios have been used up, but has there been a game that really worked the same way those classics did since "Tetris" ("Tempest 2000"/"X"/"3000", being an update, doesn't count )?
Of course, I imagine that type of game isn't really economical to produce any more - a game that people still want to play even after the company's next big game comes out could be a short-term success and a strategic disaster. Heck, it could be part of the reason that the first videogame boom crashed - no compelling reason to upgrade either software or hardware.
It's funny, though - I look through the Xbox displays or the DC shelves, and I see some things that look impressive, but I wonder about their replay value.

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Jay's Movie Blog - A movie-viewing diary.Transplanted Life: Sci-fi soap opera about a man placed in a new body, updated two or three times a week.Trading Post Inn - Another gender-bending soap, with different collaborators writing different points of view.

Because, generally, the market doesn't want them. They're hard to get right to appeal to a large market share (ala Tetris) without appearing as just another 'me too' clone. The hardcore market isn't interested generally in buying them either.
The remakes you mention failed to set the world alight sales wise...
------------------Nothing In Particular

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high resolution ipod featuring dlp hd programming is the best, almost as good as playstation 2 with wega windows media on a super cd! ps2 and tivo do dolby tv with broadband hdtv!

A lot of games today do have the "pick up and play" ability (not as many as there used to be), but they aren't that popular. Super Smash Brothers is one of these games, but since it looks kinda childish and is made by Nintendo, which means people will look it over.
Also, complex controls mean deeper gameplay, and you can't have complex controls on a "pick up and play" game, so you must make games that take longer to get into.

Because, generally, the market doesn't want them. They're hard to get right to appeal to a large market share (ala Tetris) without appearing as just another 'me too' clone. The hardcore market isn't interested generally in buying them either.

I disagree. I think it's more because it is insanely difficult to come up with untried simple gameplay scenarios. Tetris was such a phenomenon because of its simplicity.

Ah, Tetris...So simple to pickup yet so hard to truly master. It's what made the gameboy the success it is today.
I still love firing up the old atari every once and a while, but I usually go through the games that I have pretty quickly once I've gone through the loop of levels on each. Some how I just can't figure out how I spent so much time playing these games before, they just don't hold my interest as long as they used to.
Dean

I remember playing Space Invaders on the 2600 continuously for three hour stretches on a single game. If memory serves, there were four "levels" where the invaders started one row closer at the begining of the level. The fourth wave (and every wave thereafter) started on the same level where your shields would normally reside. It wasn't as much strategy or skill as it was endurance. In fact, I remember that the most common reason for me to end the game was that I had to use the bathroom and there was no pause switch on the game.
I have fond memories of gaming in the 80s but there is no way I'd have the patience for such repetition today.

Ahhhh. The photo brings back so much memories. I remember the 2600's overglut of crap games. There were many gems like Pitfall. Help me remember a classic, some space shooting game with a crude cockpit view. I believe it was done by Atari and even included a warp, hyperdrive graphics. At the time it was one of the best ever. I even liked Indiana Jones if I recall.

"Star Raiders". Not quite as good as the original 400/800 version, but it was notable for coming with a keypad so you could switch to map view, between torpedos and lasers, etc.
Atari (there are persistent rumors that Infogrames will be changing its branding soon) needs to update this for the new systems. If I see "Star Raiders" for the Xbox, I'm buying one then and there.[Edited last by Jason Seaver on October 07, 2001 at 07:39 AM]

Jay's Movie Blog - A movie-viewing diary.Transplanted Life: Sci-fi soap opera about a man placed in a new body, updated two or three times a week.Trading Post Inn - Another gender-bending soap, with different collaborators writing different points of view.